Firstly, views on the Apple iPhone: great. Next impression: not so great. You can’t use it with your eyes closed. And yesterday, Cisco sues Apple for iPhone trademark infringement. In a video on intellectual property, James Boyle at Duke Law School says, when a company starts suing over intellectual property, it’s a good time to dump their stock.
W3C’s making the first concrete, organised, meaningful move against intellectual property over-protection. W3C standards will be royalty-free.
The Economist on how copyrights aren’t really helping creativity, which is what they were intended to do in the first place. via andersja
Lessig argues copyright to the Supreme Court. Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford, and argues against excessive legislation of the Internet and related technologies. Good guy.
RIAA sues radio stations for playing their music. (No, not really. It’s a spoof. But I wouldn’t be surprised.) via Scripting News
Get an idea of how much trouble copyright is generating for Google. via LinuxJournal
This Economist article talks about the problems with patent laws. A recent report by the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights says: the interests of the “producer” dominate in the evolution of IP policy, and those of the ultimate consumer are either not heard or heeded.
More nostalgia. John Keogh patented the wheel. via Ig Nobel Prizes
The flip side of copyright: Hindi songs featured in albums.
Maybe the DMCA is not as Draconian as we thought.
Forbes has a list the rich and the dead (dead celebrities who continue to earn a lot.) Elvis, of course, tops the list, but it’s good to see Charles Schulz and Tolkien on the list as well.
At last, Microsoft will be revealing its Windows source. Parts of it.
The 4'33" is a work by John Cage, comprising of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of absolute silence. (A tribute to absolute zero: 273 seconds of silence). Is there a copyright issue here?
Is there hope? Could the copyright duration be brought down from 70 years?
Bad patents.
Interesting views on freedom to license software.
Neat quiz question: Against which company did Anand R Mani win a lawsuit on IPR violation? (Thanks, XS)
And article on [Human Capital Valuation](http://www.iimb.ernet.in/review/abs133.htm#Human Capital Valuation: An Improved Model) from Deep, Kalidas, Kundu, Pankaj and Sumit on IIMB Review.
Jakob Nielsen has a whole bunch of patents relating to Internet usability. Metafilter has an interesting discussion on whether that’s a good idea.
In some quiet corner, something different is happening to copyrights. The law of eminent domain is being applied to content. Not good enough, but its a start.
The US Copyright office has come up with a Copyright search engine.
The Indian Patent Facilitating Centre helps Indians develop and register patents.
BountyQuest is a place where companies post rewards for documents – and anyone who comes up with such documents gets a prize. Many requests are for patent debunks.
Sweden has ruled that it’s OK to have links to illegal MP3s, so long as the server is in a country where illegal MP3s are legal. That’s in stark contrast with France vs Yahoo. In fact, the norm is that linking even to the front page of commercial sites needs permission sometimes. A court in Utah ruled that providing links to copyrighted material could constitute copyright infringement. Better check out cyberlaws and ensure compliance with copyright rules on the Internet. ...
Stephen King has stopped writing ‘The Plant’. People downloaded the chapters, but haven’t paid. So he’s mad. Smart move.